SLAMonline Top 50: Elton Brand, no. 27

Elton Brand is exactly who you think he should be. He doesn’t exceed expectations, and even more importantly, he never leaves you wanting more. Brand does and is just right.

Every once in a while, some guys manage to surprise us by doing more than what we thought they were capable of as basketball players, and all too often, others fail to reach the goals we set out for them. Not Elton Brand, though.

Brand was put up on this Earth to rack up 20 and 10s in the League, and that’s exactly what he’s done since the Bulls made him the first overall pick nine years ago. In fact, 20 and 10 is his career average.

Throw in a field goal percentage of slightly over 50, durability (E.B. has appeared in 83 percent of the games his teams were scheduled to play), and solid defensive numbers across the board, and you’ve got yourself a pretty strong candidate for the Hall of Fame someday.

(You’ve also got yourself someone who, all things considered, should probably have a wee bit higher ranking on this here list.)

The fact that he played on some of the most putrid teams in NBA history for a sizable chunk of his career – anyone care to revisit the wholly inglorious Tim Floyd Era? – never affected his performance; the fans always knew what they were getting from Elton.

And that is a rock-solid power forward, one of the very best in the business, and someone who quite simply deserved better than the cruel hand he was dealt for so many years by the basketball gods.

At 29-years-old, in the prime of his hoops life (and supposedly healthy), he’s now a Philadelphia Sixer, and thanks to his arrival, the passionate fans of that city expect their team to once again become a force in the Eastern Conference. It’s a feeling they haven’t experienced since a dude named Allen was performing nightly miracles for them a few years back.

There’s no reason to believe that Elton Brand will not deliver on what is expected of him, as usual.